Moral stories reading with internal negative reinforcement enhance children’s sharing behavior

Reading moral stories is crucial for children's moral learning and development. The present study examined the effect of features of moral stories on children's sharing behavior. Experiment 1 which involved 153 4-year-old children and 169 6-year-old children, utilized a 2 × 2 design to examine the effect of story value of reinforcement (positive vs. negative) and source of reinforcement (internal vs. external) in stories on children's sharing behavior of 4-year-old and 6-year-old children. Our findings indicate a notable effect of internally driven negative reinforcement on sharing behaviors among 6-year-olds, particularly when the narrative prompted a feeling of guilt within the protagonist for not sharing. However, there was no significant difference in 4-year-olds. Experiment 2 considered the children's reflection on the consequences of their actions, involved 131 6-year-old children and compared three conditions (moral stories with internal negative reinforcement, moral dilemma stories, and controlling conditions). The results showed that children in internal negative reinforcement condition exhibited more sharing behavior. In contrast, no significant differences were found between moral dilemma stories and controlling conditions. These findings highlight that feeling guilt can promote prosocial behavior among 6-year-old children.